The Saint on the Spanish Main by Leslie Charteris Read Free Book Online Page B

untraveled, is the city of New Providence,
which is an island in the Bahamas) at the time is one of those questions
which always arise in stories about him, and which can only be answered by repeating
that he liked to travel and was just as likely to show up there as in
Nova Zembla or Namaqualand. As for why he should have been invited to the
house of Mrs. Herbert H. Wexall, that is another irrelevancy which is hardly
covered by the fact that he could just as well have shown up at the
house of Joe Wallenski (of the arsonist Wallenskis) or the
White House—he had friends in many places, legitimate and otherwise. But
Mrs. Wexall had some international renown as a lion hunter, even if her
stalking had been confined to the variety which roars loudest in
plush drawing rooms; and it was not to be expected that the advent of such a
creature as Simon Templar would have escaped the attention of her salon safari.
    Thus one noontime Simon found himself
strolling up the driveway and into what little was left of the life
of Floyd Vosper. Naturally he did not know this at the time; nor
did he know Floyd Vosper, except by name. In this he was no
different from at least fifty million other people in that
hemisphere; for Floyd Vosper was not only one of the most widely syndicated
pundits of the day, but his books (Feet of Clay; As I Saw Them; and The Twenty Worst Men in the World) had all been the selections
of one book club or another and still sold by the million in
reprints. For Mr. Vosper specialized in the ever-popular sport of
shattering reputations. In his journalistic years he had met, and apparently
had unique opportunities to study, practically every great name in
the national and international scene, and could unerringly remember everything in their
biographies that they would prefer
forgotten, and could impale and epitomize
all their weaknesses with devastatingly pin point precision, leaving them naked and squirming on the operating table
of his vocabulary. But what this merciless
professional iconoclast was like as a person, Simon had never heard or bothered much to wonder about.
    So the first impression that Vosper made on
him was a voice, a still unidentified voice, a dry and deliberate and
peculiarly needling voice, which came from behind a bank of riotous hibiscus and oleander.
    “My dear Janet,” it said, “you
must not let your inno cent admiration for Reggie’s bulging biceps
color your estimate of his perspicacity in world affairs. The title
of All-American, I hate to disillusion you, has no reference to
statesmanship.”
    There was a rather strained laugh that must
have come from Reggie, and a girl’s clear young voice said: “That
isn’t fair, Mr. Vosper. Reggie doesn’t pretend to be a genius but he’s
bright enough to have a wonderful job waiting for him on Wall
Street.”
    “I don’t doubt that he will make an
excellent contact man for the more stupid clients,” conceded the
voice with the measured nasal gripe. “And I’m sure that his education
can cope with the simple arithmetic of the Stock Exchange, just
as I’m sure it can grasp the basic figures of your father’s Dun and Bradstreet.
This should not dazzle you with his brilliance, any more than it should
make you believe that you have some spiritual fascination that
lured him to your feet.”
    At this point Simon rounded a curve in the
driveway and caught his first sight of the speakers, all of whom looked up
at him with reserved curiosity and two-thirds of them with a certain hint of relief.
    There was no difficulty in assigning them to
their lines —the young red-headed giant with the pleasantly rugged face and the slim pretty blonde
girl, who sat at a wrought-iron table on the
terrace in front of the house with a
broken deck of cards in front of them which es tablished an interrupted
game of gin rummy, and the thin stringy man
reclining in a long cane chair with a cigarette-holder
in one hand and highball glass in the other.
    Simon smiled and